


River and Valley Lost and Remembered

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Culture, Gen, Loss, Memory, Music, Poetry, Politics, Promises, Tusaine, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28895601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: In Tusaine, they remember their river and valley lost. Inspired by the events of In the Hand of the Goddess.
Kudos: 7





	River and Valley Lost and Remembered

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write an alternative take on Tusaine and King Ain for awhile so I'm happy I finally got around to writing this piece. Maybe I'll write more about Tusaine soon if the muse feels like cooperating...

River and Valley Lost and Remembered

In Tusaine, they remembered like blood spilled into the rusty hill-land soil their river and valley lost. Lost less than a generation ago during the reign of Ain’s father, Clovis IV. Lost when Ain was seven and first learning how to swing a sword, when Hilam was five and toddling about the nursery at the scrumptious court in Ashford, and Jemis was a mere bulge in their mother’s belly.

Ain had been there, standing dutifully at his father’s right hand, as King Clovis IV sat at the writing desk in King Jasson’s sweltering pavilion and signed the treaty that ceded both sides of the Drell River and much of its surrounding valley to Tortall in perpetuity. He saw how his father’s fingers trembled as he took up the quill to affix his signature to this humiliating document.

It was then, witnessing his father’s disgrace and impotency, that Ain swore to himself that he would reclaim the Drell River and Valley won in his grandfather’s glorious day when Tusiane had been an empire that could rival Carthak in its splendor or the Old Ones at the height of their imperial glory.

He would make that promise not only to himself on that day of shame but on many days after as he grew into manhood. He made it every time he heard a poet lament, the recollection sharp as a knife thrust to the heart, the land and people lost to Tortall within his lifetime–within his too short and never fading memory. He made it every time he listened to a melancholy troubadour sing, strumming sadly on the inevitable accompanying harp, in honor of their river and valley lost to Tortallan aggression.

The Tortallans, he thought listening to the rich poetry and music of his people, could not compose such lyrics. They were a barbaric people with an unrefined palette that showed in their bland, often over-boiled food. They didn’t appreciate emotion, drama, and high art. They were a vicious people trapped in pure practicality, and they had attacked the beauty and the grace of Tusaine because they were incapable of understanding it.

He came to manhood hating the Tortallans as much as his brothers did, though he strove to be more circumspect in his loathing. Sometimes it profited a man to be subtle and to play the long game, especially now that Jasson the Conqueror was dead and his son Roald the Peacemaker reigned in Corus.

When his own father died of a persistent cough no healer could cure in the winter chill that blew down through the hills and valleys from Galla in the north, Ain knelt beside his father’s death bed, clutching the man’s icy, withered hand as the last remaining strength fled from it.

“Swear to me,” his father rasped between hacking coughs that shook his entire, feeble frame, “that you’ll regain our river and valley lost to Tortall before the end of your reign.”

“I swear it.” Ain lifted his father’s hand to his lips for a kiss that sealed the oath. “I will reclaim our river and valley lost for the glory of Tusaine and the honor of your memory.”

“Swear it too.” His father’s feverish eyes had drifted to Hilam and Jemis who knelt like ghosts on either side of Ain. “I want all my sons to swear it.”

“I swear it.” Hilam and Jemis each made this vow in turn.

Ain knew that both his brothers remembered their promise in their own ways. Hilam eternally agitated and plotted for war. Jemis slipped across the Drell and spied on the enemy in his guise of Jem Tanner, uneducated Tortallan commoner. As for Ain, his disguise was even cleverer than Jem’s.

He lounged in the grand gardens with his wives and pretended that he thought only of natural beauty, sensual pleasure, and the courtly love songs of his troubadours. The grand gardens that had been built by his grandfather as much as a projection of power as a place of power and refuge. There should have been a message, a warning, to the Tortallans in that, but they underestimated him and thought he had forgotten Tusaine’s river and valley lost.

They didn’t understand that he remembered the pain and the ache of that loss that his father had carried as a guilt and grief to the grave. They didn’t realize that he would make war to restore that ceded territory to Tusaine. They fancied him to be weak in his pleasure gardens, a tool of his more cunning and ruthless brothers. Their assumptions blinded them to the reality that he was king in Tusaine, his brothers were his tools, and they only ever acted under his commands. They didn’t notice how he was training a generation of knights and squires to hate the Tortallans–to hunger and thirst to regain the Drell River and Valley. Their arrogance prevented them from recognizing that Tusaine, which had once been an empire, would never be content to be landlocked and would never accept that the land Tortall had stolen from them was truly gone. They would remember the lost land forever in verse and in song, the lyrics becoming a mighty battle cry that would rally them to war against Tortall. Ain had foreseen and planned this. In his pleasure gardens, he smiled not because of his lovely wives, but because of his strategy coming to ripe fruition like fat grapes on a vineyard vine on the cusp of being crushed into intoxicating wine.


End file.
